How the dramatic rescue of eight people trapped in a cable car unfolded in Pakistan - The Independent

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Eight people were pulled to safety on Tuesday after a dramatic rescue effort hauled them from a cable car left dangling 900ft (274m) above a ravine in northwest Pakistan.

One of the two cable lines carrying the car snapped at around 0700 local time [GMT 0200] as six children were travelling to school alongside two adults in a remote mountainous area in Battagram, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, about 200km (124 miles) north of the capital Islamabad.

Despite a desperate rescue mission, most of the pasengers were still trapped well into the night as the car clung to the lone cable, while local residents watched on anxiously from below and crowds gathered around televisions in offices, shops, restaurants and hospitals across Pakistan to watch the operation unfold.

Army commandos were called in as three helicopters initially scrambled to save those onboard, with efforts impeded by high winds and another rope some 30ft above the cable car.

People watch as a soldier dangled from a helicopter during the rescue mission

(AFP/Getty)

The commandos initially managed to get food and medicine to the passengers in the cabin, which is believed to be used by dozens each day to cross the river to nearby schools, government offices and other businesses. Known by locals as “Dolly”, the cable car links the village of Jangri to Batangi, where the school is located.

“The terrain below is difficult given the peaks and the river flowing underneath in the valley,” said Bilal Fiazi, a spokesperson for the 1122 rescue service.

“Our situation is precarious, for god’s sake do something,” Gulfaraz, a 20-year-old on the cable car, told local television channel Geo News over the phone, appealing to authorities to rescue them as soon as possible.

He said the children were aged between 10 and 15 and one had fainted due to heat and fear. It was reported by local media that one of the children on board had a possible heart condition.

Three of the children who were rescued from the cable car

But television footage appeared to show one schoolchild being winched to safety on a zip line in a harness shortly before night fell, with another said to have been rescued before the helicopter operation was grounded at around 1900 local time [GMT 1400].

Despite conflicting reports that four children had been pulled to safety at that point – and confusion over the ratio of children and adults onboard – it appears that six people remained onboard as the sun went down.

Floodlights were installed and an official said that cable crossing experts had been sent by the military to the area and would try to rescue the children by transerring them one by one on a smaller cable car, or trolley, along a cable.

Local residents said community members from surrounding areas who had experience rescuing people this way had also arrived.

A video shared by a rescue agency official showed more than a dozen rescuers and locals lined up near the edge of the dark ravine, pulling on a cable until a boy attached to it by a harness reached the hillside safely to cries of “God is great”.

A child is brough to safety along a zip line

“It is a slow and risky operation. One person needs to tie himself with a rope and he will go in a small [trolley] and rescue them one by one,” Abdul Nasir Khan, a nearby resident told Reuters.

Just before 2300 local time [GMT 1800], Pakistan’s interim prime minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar announced that all the children onboard had been successfully rescued.

Moments later, his interior minister Sarfraz Bugti announced that the rescue mission had concluded successfully, as he expressed his appreciation “for our valiant armed forces personnel, administration and locals for their selflessness and determination in carrying out this complex operation”.

The rescue efforts had transfixed the country, while villagers had lined the slopes of the valley and appeared to have been eager to do all they could to rescue those trapped above.

“An extremely difficult and complicated operation has been successfully completed by the Pakistan military,” the military said in a statement. “All stranded persons were safely evacuated and moved to a safe place ... civil administration and locals also actively came forward to participate in this operation.”

Ten people were killed when a cable car lift installed by local villagers in the popular mountain resort of Murree broke and fell into a ravine hundreds of feet deep in 2017.

Mr Kakar said he had “directed the authorities to conduct safety inspections of all such private chairlifts and ensure that they are safe to operate and use”.

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report

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2023-08-23 05:43:52Z
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Russia-Ukraine war live: three drones downed in Moscow region, says mayor; Russia attacks Danube grain facilities - The Guardian

From 2h ago

A drone hit a building under construction in central Moscow early on Wednesday, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has said, in what AFP reported was the sixth straight night of aerial attacks on Russia’s capital region.

The Russian military downed two more drones over the western part of the Moscow region, the mayor said on his Telegram channel.

A loud explosion was heard in the capital’s central district on Wednesday morning, a short while after flights were suspended at the city’s airports, Russia’s RIA news agency reported. The central district is 5km from the Kremlin.

The Russian defence ministry said that the drone had been “suppressed by electronic warfare” before losing control and colliding with the building.

“At night, air defence forces thwarted another attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by three aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles on the city of Moscow,” the ministry said. There were no casualties, it said.

In addition to the Moscow city attack, two drones were “destroyed by air defence systems” in Moscow’s Mozhaisk and Khimki districts, it said.

UK government support for Ukraine’s nuclear fuel supply will help end the country’s reliance on Russian supplies, Grant Shapps said after a trip to a Ukrainian power station.

The government has announced its intention to provide a £192m loan guarantee through UK Export Finance – the UK’s export credit agency – enabling UK-headquartered Urenco to supply Ukraine’s national nuclear company, Energoatom, with uranium enrichment services, which are vital for nuclear fuel.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said that, once provided, the support will bring the UK’s non-military financial assistance to Ukraine close to £5bn, PA media reports.

Ukraine has four nuclear power plants, with its largest plant, at Zaporizhzhia, currently held by Russia.

Before Russia launched its full-scale invasion last year, Ukraine had been receiving most of its nuclear services and fuel from Russia.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region said on Tuesday that three civilians were killed in a Ukrainian drone strike on a sanatorium in the village of Lavy, close to the Ukrainian border. The claim has not yet been independently verified.

Ukrainian air defences shot down 11 out of 20 drones launched by Russia in overnight attacks, the air force said on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian military and local officials said Russia carried out attacks in the southern region of Odesa and in the Danube River area, which is important for grain exports, reportedly causing a fire in at least one grain facility (see post at 06.23).

The military published photographs – which have not yet been independently verified -showing piles of grain under the burnt shell of a storage facility, Reuters reports.

Odesa governor Oleh Kiper said the attack on the region lasted for three hours.

“Unfortunately, there were hits to the production and transhipment complexes where a fire broke out... The damage includes grain storage facilities,” Kiper said on Telegram.

Ukraine’s Danube ports accounted for around a quarter of grain exports before Russia pulled out of a UN-backed deal to provide safe passage for the export of Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea in July.

The ports have since become the main route out, with grain also sent on barges to Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta for shipment onwards.

Hello everyone, this is Yohannes Lowe. I’ll be running the blog until 3pm (UK time). Please do feel free to get in touch on Twitter if you have any story tips.

Reuters: the Netherlands will send Ukraine a thousand chargers for remote demining, Dutch defence minister Kajsa Ollongren said on a visit to Kyiv.

The announcement coincides with heavily mined Russian defence lines slowing down a Ukrainian counteroffensive to recapture territory seized by Russia since its forces invaded in February 2022.

“There is a decision to provide about a thousand portable chargers for remote demining that can make passageways in engineered barriers,” Ollongren was quoted as saying on the Ukrainian defence ministry website at a meeting with Ukrainian minister Oleksiy Reznikov on Tuesday.

“Now, as I know, you are facing the problem of extremely dense mining of territories,” she said.

Russia attacked grain facilities in Odesa and the Danube River region overnight, causing fires in grain facilities, Ukrainian military and local authorities said on Wednesday.

“The enemy hit grain storage facilities and a production and transshipment complex in Danube region. A fire broke out in the warehouses and was quickly contained. Firefighters continue to work,” military said on the Telegram messaging app.

A drone hit a building under construction in central Moscow early on Wednesday, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has said, in what AFP reported was the sixth straight night of aerial attacks on Russia’s capital region.

The Russian military downed two more drones over the western part of the Moscow region, the mayor said on his Telegram channel.

A loud explosion was heard in the capital’s central district on Wednesday morning, a short while after flights were suspended at the city’s airports, Russia’s RIA news agency reported. The central district is 5km from the Kremlin.

The Russian defence ministry said that the drone had been “suppressed by electronic warfare” before losing control and colliding with the building.

“At night, air defence forces thwarted another attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by three aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles on the city of Moscow,” the ministry said. There were no casualties, it said.

In addition to the Moscow city attack, two drones were “destroyed by air defence systems” in Moscow’s Mozhaisk and Khimki districts, it said.

Welcome to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine. This is Helen Sullivan with the latest.

Our top story this morning: A drone hit a building under construction in central Moscow early on Wednesday, the city’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has said, in what AFP reported was the sixth straight night of aerial attacks on Russia’s capital region.

More on this shortly. In the meantime:

• Ukraine said its troops had entered the strategically important south-eastern village of Robotyne, a potentially significant advance in its counteroffensive against Russia. Hanna Maliar, Ukraine’s deputy defence minister, said Ukrainian soldiers were organising the evacuation of civilians, but were still coming under fire from Russian forces.

• A prominent Russian journalist said on Tuesday that Gen Sergei Surovikin, former commander of Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine, had been dismissed as head of Russia’s aerospace forces. There was no official confirmation of the report by Alexei Venediktov, the well-connected former head of the now defunct Ekho Moskvy radio station, but it was cited by some other Russian news outlets on social media, Reuters reported.

• Three people were killed and two were injured as a result of Russian shelling of several villages in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the prosecutor general’s office said. According to the prosecutors, all three people, two women and a man, were killed in the village of Torske on Tuesday evening. The prosecutors provided no further detail of the attack.

• Russia said on Tuesday that it destroyed two Ukrainian military boats in the Black Sea. Moscow’s defence ministry said one of its Sukhoi Su-30sm jets destroyed a Ukrainian “reconnaissance boat” near Russian gas production facilities. It later said it also destroyed a US-made speedboat carrying Ukrainian troops east of Snake Island, without providing further detail. The claims were not verified.

• A group of Ukrainian “saboteurs” tried to breach Russia’s border in the Bryansk region, the regional governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The claim was not verified.

• The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said Russia would remain a “responsible supplier” of food and grain to African countries and could take Ukraine’s place as an international supplier of grain, in recorded remarks to a summit of the Brics countries in South Africa. He also said said the use of US dollars in trade between Brics nations was decreasing, as the countries moved towards national currencies and away from dollars in an “irreversible process of de-dollarisation”.

• The international court of justice will hear Russia’s objections to its jurisdiction in a genocide case brought by Ukraine in hearings starting in September, the body said on Tuesday. Ukraine filed a case with the ICJ shortly after Russia’s invasion began on 24 February 2022, which accused Moscow of falsely applying genocide law to justify the attack, Reuters reported.

• Denmark has begun training eight Ukrainian pilots in flying F-16 fighter jets as part of its commitment to donate aircraft, the Danish armed forces said on Tuesday. Denmark and the Netherlands pledged on Sunday to donate F-16s to Ukraine.

• The leaders of 11 Balkan and eastern European countries signed a joint declaration backing Ukraine’s territorial integrity at a summit in Athens on Monday. In the presence of Volodymyr Zelenskiy, they expressed their “unwavering support for Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders” in the face of Russia’s aggression.

• Poland’s president has said Russia is in the process of shifting some short-range nuclear weapons to neighbouring Belarus. Andrzej Duda said the move would shift the security architecture of the region and the entire Nato military alliance, Associated Press reported.

• Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said the commitment made by some European countries to donate F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will help to minimise Ukrainian losses and de-escalate the conflict.

• A drone appears to have destroyed a supersonic Russian bomber on an airfield hundreds of kilometres from Ukraine, British military intelligence has said, the latest in a string of successful assaults on prestige infrastructure and military hardware. These attacks, far beyond the frontlines, are powerful propaganda for Ukraine, though Kyiv rarely claims them directly.

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2023-08-23 05:00:00Z
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Chandrayaan-3: India's Moon lander Vikram aims for historic lunar south pole landing - BBC

Isro

By Geeta Pandey

BBC News, Delhi

India is hoping to make history on Wednesday by becoming the first nation to land near the Moon's south pole.

One of the mission's major goals is to hunt for water-based ice, which scientists say could support human habitation on the Moon in future.

If Chandrayaan-3 is successful, India will be only the fourth country to have achieved a soft landing on the Moon.

India's attempt comes just days after Russia's Luna-25 crashed while trying to touch down in the same region.

The south pole of the Moon holds special promise in the search for water ice. The surface area that remains in permanent shadow there is huge, and scientists say it means there is a possibility of water in these areas.

The US, the former Soviet Union and China have all achieved a soft landing near the Moon's equator - but none have led successful missions to its south pole.

India's attempt to land its Chandrayaan-2 mission near the south pole in 2019 was unsuccessful - it crashed into the lunar surface.

So all eyes are now on Chandrayaan-3 - its third mission to the little-explored Moon.

The spacecraft with an orbiter, lander and a rover lifted off on 14 July from the Sriharikota space centre in south India.

The lander - called Vikram after Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) founder Vikram Sarabhai - carries within its belly the 26kg rover named Pragyaan, the Sanskrit word for wisdom.

The lander will attempt touchdown at 18:04 local time (12:34GMT) on Wednesday, with the descent planned to start at 17:45 India time from its current height of 25km (15 miles), Isro has said.

Scientists say the following few minutes will be the most crucial as the lander attempts to make touchdown on an area that is "very uneven, full of craters and boulders", with some predicting it will be "15 minutes of terror."

• India's latest Moon mission sends first photos
• Historic India Moon mission lifts off successfully

Once the descent starts, the lander's speed will be gradually reduced from 1.68km per second at its present height to almost zero by the time it reaches 800m, Isro's Nilesh M Desai told ANI news agency.

A call will then be made about its landing location once Vikram has travelled down to a height of 150m. If the area is found unsuitable, the lander will move a little to the left or the right to find a more suitable landing spot. If all fails, the emergency mode will kick in which will help with a safe landing, Mr Desai said.

Once it lands and the dust settles, the six-wheeled rover will crawl out of its belly and roam around the rocks and craters on the Moon's surface, gathering crucial data and images to be sent to the lander, which will pass it on to the orbiter to send to Earth.

The rover's wheels have the Isro's logo and emblem embossed on them so that they leave imprints on the lunar soil during the Moon walk, an official told the BBC.

ISRO

Chandrayaan-3's journey to the Moon has generated a lot of excitement in India, with wishes for the mission's success pouring in from across the country.

Isro has announced plans for a live telecast of the landing and millions of people, including schoolchildren, are expected to tune in.

On Tuesday, Isro chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath told the Hindustan Times he was "extremely confident of a successful landing" because they had made "back-ups of the back-up plans".

He said they had carefully studied the data from the Chandrayaan-2 crash and carried out simulation exercises to fix the glitches.

In the past few days, the Vikram lander's camera has been extensively mapping the lunar surface while attempting to locate a safe landing spot.

In its update on Tuesday, Isro said the mission "is on schedule, systems are undergoing regular checks and smooth sailing is continuing".

• India mission enters Moon orbit, aiming for south pole
• India's lunar lander Vikram inches closer to Moon

Mr Somanath has said Chandrayaan-3 will work to build on the success of India's earlier Moon missions and help make some "very substantial" scientific discovery.

Chandrayaan-1, the country's first Moon mission in 2008, discovered the presence of water molecules on the parched lunar surface and established that the Moon has an atmosphere during daytime.

And despite failing the soft landing, Chandrayaan-2 was not a complete write-off - its orbiter continues to circle the Moon even today and will help the Vikram lander send images and data to Earth for analysis.

The lander and the rover are carrying five scientific instruments which will help discover "the physical characteristics of the surface of the Moon, the atmosphere close to the surface and the tectonic activity to study what goes on below the surface".

• The race to unravel the mysteries of Moon's south pole
• India's lunar lander sends close-up photos of Moon

The landing date has been carefully selected to coincide with the start of a lunar day.

A day on the Moon equals 28 days on Earth and this will mean the lander and rover will have 14 days of sunlight to charge their batteries. Once night falls, they will discharge and stop working.

It is not yet clear whether they will come back to life when the next lunar day starts.

India is not the only country with an eye on the Moon - there's a growing global interest in it, with many other missions headed to the lunar surface in the near future. And scientists say there is still much to understand about the Moon, which is often described as a gateway to deep space.

A successful Chandrayaan-3, they say, will take us a step closer in that quest.

BBC News India is now on YouTube. Click here to subscribe and watch our documentaries, explainers and features.

Read more India stories from the BBC:

• Why Jasprit Bumrah is so important for Indian cricket
• Fury in The Gambia over India cough syrup deaths
• A show taking on all that's wrong with Indian weddings
• More rain, less snow are making Himalayas dangerous
• The baby at the centre of an India-Germany row

Related Topics

• Asia
• Chandrayaan programme
• Exploration of the Moon
• India

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2023-08-23 06:40:39Z
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Greece wildfires: Eighteen bodies found in Greek forest - BBC

By Kostas Koukoumakas near Athens & Paul Kirby in London

BBC News

Eighteen bodies have been found in a forested area of northern Greece hit by wildfires for the past four days, the Greek fire service says.

Initial reports suggest those who died may have been migrants. A coroner and investigation team are heading to the scene in the Dadia forest.

The Evros region of north-eastern Greece, not far from the Turkish border, has been ravaged by fires.

Patients were moved from a hospital as the fires reached Alexandroupolis.

The flames reached the grounds of the city's university hospital and newborn babies and intensive care patients were among those evacuated to a ferry berthed at the city's port.

An earlier death, also believed to have been a migrant, had been reported in a village close to Alexandroupolis and emergency services had sent mobile text messages to the surrounding areas asking people to leave.

The Dadia national park is a large wooded area to the north of Alexandroupolis, and fires are thought to have spread rapidly there since Monday.

Fire service spokesman Yiannis Artopoios said the possibility that the 18 victims found on Tuesday had entered Greece illegally was being investigated, given that there had been no reports of missing residents.

The Evros region has become one of the most popular routes for Syrian and Asian migrants crossing the River Evros from Turkey into the European Union.

Related Topics

• Greece
• Wildfires

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2023-08-22 12:16:46Z
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Pakistan cable car rescue under way for eight people trapped - BBC

By Zubair Khan in Abbottabad & Kelly Ng

BBC News

A military rescue is under way for six children and two adults trapped in a cable car over a ravine in Pakistan's north-west.

The group were on their way to school when one of the cables snapped, leaving it dangling 274m (900ft) above ground, officials said.

Pakistan's acting PM has ordered rescuers to attend to the "alarming" incident in Battagram.

Helicopters have reached the car but rescue conditions are precarious.

• FOLLOW LIVE: Helicopters sent to rescue children trapped in cable car

The eight passengers were trapped for at least four hours before the first helicopter arrived, local media outlet Dawn reported.

The incident happened at about 07:00 local time (02:00 GMT) on Tuesday across the Allai valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Residents who spotted the car stranded mid-air used loudspeakers to alert local officials to the crisis.

The open chair-lift is now being "suspended by a single rope", local rescue official Abdul Basit Khan told AFP news agency.

A local police officer, Muhammad Amjad, who was at the scene told BBC News that four helicopters have so far taken part in the operation but attempts were unsuccessful.

A commando has tried twice to reach the cable car by the help of rope from the military helicopter, assistant commissioner of Allai Jawad Hussain told the BBC.

According to Mr Hussain, water and some food has been delivered to the stranded people by the rescue team from the helicopter.

In addition to gusty winds, the operation is being complicated by worries that the helicopter's rotor blades could further destabilise the chair-lift, Shariq Riaz Khattak, a rescue official at the site, told Reuters news agency.

The six children on board the cable car are aged between 10 and 16 years old.

The 16 year old has a heart condition and has been unconscious for at least two hours, Gulfaraz, one of the adults stuck in the cable car, told the BBC.

Rescue worker Mr Khattak confirmed that a child had fainted due to heat and fear.

"For God's sake help us," Gulfaraz told Pakistan television channel Geo News by phone.

Gulfaraz noted that anxious crowds had gathered on either side of the valley to watch the mission. Authorities are trying to spread nets underneath the car.

"People in our area are standing here and crying," Gulfaraz said, urging authorities to send immediate help.

There aren't many daylight hours left to do the rescue since sunset in Battagram is expected at 18:48 local time (13:48 GMT).

BBC Weather's Paul Goddard said the local forecast showed hot and humid conditions throughout Tuesday and Wednesday with continued gusty winds, as well as a few periods of heavy rain or thunderstorms. Maximum temperatures were expected to be around 33C (91F) over the next three days.

Mr Altaf Hussain

Headmaster Ali Asghar Khan, who runs the high school the children attend, said relatives of those trapped in the cable car are also at the scene.

"The parents are gathered at the site of the chair-lift. We are all worried," Mr Khan told AFP news agency.

A local teacher told Dawn that about 150 people take the hazardous journey to school by cable car daily because of a lack of transport options in the area.

Allai is a mountainous area, located at an altitude of 2000m above sea level. Settlements are spread far and wide.

Most of this mountainous area in Pakistan's north has no infrastructure like roads and basic facilities. In most of the area chair-lifts are used regularly for transportation from one mountain to another.

The chair-lift involved in this incident is believed to be privately operated by residents, local media reported.

Pakistan's acting prime minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar said on X (formerly Twitter) that he has directed the relevant authorities to inspect all such privately-operated chairlifts to ensure that they are safe for use.

"The chairlift accident in Battagram is really alarming," he said.

Additional reporting from Ece Goksedef in London

Related Topics

• Pakistan

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2023-08-22 11:14:02Z
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Wagner making ‘Africa even more free’, says Prigozhin in first post-rebellion video - The Guardian

Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has posted his first video address since leading a short-lived rebellion in Russia, appearing in a clip – possibly shot in Africa – on Telegram channels affiliated with the Wagner group on Monday.

Prigozhin moved into the global spotlight in June with a dramatic, short-lived mutiny that posed the most serious threat to Vladimir Putin in the president’s 23-year rule. The Wagner founder long benefited from Putin’s powerful patronage, including while he built a private army that fought for Russian interests abroad and participated in some of the deadliest battles of the war in Ukraine.

In Monday’s video, a person who appears to be the 62-year-old mercenary leader is seen standing in a desert area in camouflage and with a rifle in his hands. In the distance, there are more armed men and a pickup truck.

He says the Wagner group is conducting reconnaissance and search activities, and “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free”. He then says Wagner is recruiting people and the group “will fulfil the tasks that were set”.

Reuters and Associated Press were not able to geolocate or verify the date of the video, but Prigozhin’s comments and some posts in the pro-Wagner channels suggested it was filmed in Africa.

Russian social media channels linked to the mercenary leader said Prigozhin was recruiting fighters to work in Africa and also inviting investors from Russia to put money into Central African Republic through Russian House, a cultural centre in the African nation’s capital.

The Central African Republic is one of the countries where Wagner’s soldiers for hire have been active and accused of committing human rights abuses. The Kremlin has used the Wagner group since 2014 as a tool to expand Russia’s presence in the Middle East and Africa.

The future of Wagner and Prigozhin has been unclear since he led a short mutiny against the Russian defence establishment in late June.

Under a deal brokered by Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, Prigozhin agreed to end his rebellion in exchange for amnesty for him and his fighters and permission to relocate to Belarus. Before moving to Belarus, Wagner handed over its weapons to the Russian military, part of efforts by Russian authorities to defuse the threat posed by the mercenaries.

Putin branded Prigozhin a traitor as the revolt unfolded and vowed harsh punishment, but the criminal case against the mercenary chief on rebellion charges was later dropped. Unusually, the Kremlin said Putin had a three-hour meeting with Prigozhin and Wagner group commanders days after the rebellion.

A video in July apparently showed Prigozhin in Belarus but he was photographed after that on the sidelines of a Russia-Africa summit in the Russian city of St Petersburg. His current whereabouts are unknown.

With Reuters and Associated Press

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2023-08-22 06:44:15Z
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Thaksin Shinawatra: Former Thailand PM jailed after return from exile - BBC

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By Jonathan Head

BBC News, Bangkok

Thailand's former PM Thaksin Shinawatra has been jailed upon returning to the country after 15 years in exile.

But many believe he has struck a deal that will keep him from serving more than a short period in prison.

He arrived on Tuesday morning in a private jet, ahead of a vote for the next Thai leader - the frontrunner is from Mr Thaksin's Pheu Thai party.

He has sentences of up to eight years outstanding from criminal cases he says were politically motivated.

Mr Thaksin, Thailand's most successful elected leader, has long been feared by conservative royalists, who have backed military coups and contentious court cases to weaken him.

But now the brash, politically-ambitious telecoms tycoon is back - he landed in Bangkok's main airport to cheers from hundreds of loyal supporters who had gathered overnight to see him. Flanked by his two daughters and son, he emerged briefly from the airport terminal and paid his respects to a portrait of the king and queen.

He was immediately taken to the Supreme Court where he was sentenced to eight years on the outstanding charges, and then to Bangkok Remand Prison. The department of corrections has said that he "is safe under the supervision of the staff".

Outside the Don Mueang Airport, 63-year-old Samniang Kongpolparn had been waiting since Monday evening to see Mr Thaksin. She, like many of the other supporters, had travelled from Surin province in the northeast, the stronghold of Mr Thaksin's party in past decades.

"He's the best prime minister we've ever had. Even though I won't get to see him today, I still wanted to come to show him support," she said. "I'm ok with them reconciling with the pro-military government, or else we're stuck with the senators. We don't want that."

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Mr Thaksin's Pheu Thai party is expected later today to join a coalition government - a byzantine process which in three months has taken Thailand full circle.

It began with the heady hopes of a new dawn led by the radical young Move Forward party, which won the most seats in the May election.

Move Forward initially formed a partnership with Pheu Thai but it's now certain that the coalition will include almost everyone but the reformers, including two parties led by former coup-makers - a deal with its sworn enemies that Pheu Thai vowed it would not do.

Pheu Thai insists the two developments are unconnected. Few people believe that.

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It is true that Pheu Thai's hands have been tied by the unelected senate, a 250-seat constitutional landmine planted in Thailand's political landscape by the military junta which ruled for five years after a 2014 coup.

And Pheu Thai's bargaining position was weakened by its poorer-then-expected performance in the election, when it lost a lot of support to Move Forward and for the first time was relegated to second place.

The senators, all appointed under the junta, are allowed to join the 500 elected MPs in voting for the new prime minister. Their thinly-disguised remit is to block any party which might threaten the status quo - the nexus of monarchy, military and big business which has dominated decision-making in Thailand for decades.

Unsurprisingly they refused to back the Move Forward-led coalition with Pheu Thai, despite its commanding majority in the lower house. When it was Pheu Thai's turn to negotiate a new coalition, its need for senate support meant it had to take in some of its former opponents.

Lulu Luo/BBC

However some Pheu Thai politicians argue that the party should have held out for a better deal, by refusing to be in a government with the most hard-line conservative groups. Any minority administration formed without Pheu Thai and Move Forward would quickly collapse, because the senators cannot join normal parliamentary votes on issues like the budget.

But the Pheu Thai leadership was not willing to wait; it even invited the ultra-royalist party United Thai Nation to join the coalition, whose leaders have in the past been virulently critical of the Shinawatra family and their supporters, and were instrumental in ousting the last Pheu Thai government led by Thaksin's sister Yingluck. That these two factions will now sit together in the same government is a mark of how far Thai politics has shifted.

In the end for the ultra-royalists the perceived threat posed by Move Forward, and by a younger generation of Thais demanding a conversation about the power and wealth of the monarchy, eclipsed their long feud with the Shinawatra family.

For the Shinawatras, and Pheu Thai's more conservative, business-minded elements, getting into government again and guaranteeing the deal to bring Thaksin back, have been bigger priorities than worrying about the party's reputation.

But there are those, even within Pheu Thai, who are horrified by the cynical pragmatism of this deal. They are warning that the party will lose even more of its once-passionate grass-roots supporters, and lose, perhaps forever, the dominance it held over electoral politics in Thailand for two decades.

Related Topics

• Asia
• Thailand
• Thaksin Shinawatra

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2023-08-22 06:10:55Z
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